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This weekend was pretty cool, we won in soccer again so that always makes me feel like a boss at the office first thing in the morning. I ate burgers with @blackdahlianz on Saturday and picked up Doom for $50 & Assassins Creed Syndicate for $38 because the Gametraders at my shopping center was closing down :(

Went shopping then out to dinner Saturday. Sunday was so chill I got to play almost two whole hours of Sunset Overdrive uninterrupted. Then we watched Skyfall since we've had the blu ray sitting around for a couple of years and I'm itching to check out Spectre. It dragged a bit in the middle but the ending was pretty excellent. The only thing that irritated me was the preroll of advertisements before I got to the top menu, which of course had spoilers playing in the background. This is why I prefer streaming even though blu ray looks better.
Speaking of, I can't remember which Streaming service had the Bond movies but Stan, Netflix and Presto all seem to have them conspicuously absent. Pretty sure it was Stan. I never got around to watching them but I know I had a bunch of them on my watch list. I really wish streaming services were a lot more transparent about which shows are leaving soon or at least which ones you had on your list that you can no longer watch. I can't imagine why they don't have this as an option.

At least it doesn't give me the stupid FBI warning about how if I steal this movie I have on a disc I bought from a store I'm going to a special hell where they put bbq sauce on my balls and leave me in the sun with a million hungry army ants. Instead I got a stupid "thank you" image and a voiceover telling me that by buying this blu ray disc I'm supporting the film industry.

Man, I just want to watch a movie that came out three years ago, not trailers for other movies that came out three years ago.

At least it doesn't give me the stupid FBI warning about how if I steal this movie I have on a disc I bought from a store I'm going to a special hell where they put bbq sauce on my balls and leave me in the sun with a million hungry army ants.

Lucky you. I import a lot of cartoons and I get that warning all the time.

Instead I got a stupid "thank you" image and a voiceover telling me that by buying this blu ray disc I'm supporting the film industry.

Is it wrong for me to say I prefer the FBI warning than a thankyou from a local industry that doesn't care if the staff in it live or die?

Good morning. Overwatch players, @jocon and I met a fairly toxic player last night. He was blaming everyone else for us losing, despite the fact that we weren't really working together. Now that "avoid this player" has been disabled, can you report someone for being a bad teammate?
http://9gag.com/gag/a84YWgZ

Yakuza 5 makes an awesome momentary departure from the whole MANLY MEN BEING MANLY AND FIGHTING LIKE MEN IN A MANLY FASHION when you start playing as a 16 year old girl who gets into dance battles.
I don't even know how this part is related to anything and I don't even care.

Mornin' all. FIL staying with us again, as a father of three and one of eight children, you'd think he'd have some other family that would put up with him for a couple of weeks - nope, he has to stay with us every time. Doesn't do "quiet", so I think we're going to retreat to the bedroom tonight with GoT so we get to listen to what's happening, rather than his damn commentary.
So, yeah, first world problems. Other than that, we're past the solstice, so that days are getting longer and that makes me happy.

I finally watched the Zelda BotW gameplay demo from e3 and now I want to crack out Zelda Wind Waker and finish it off.
Unfortunately, there is a never ending list of k-dramas coming out of Netflix and I can't get on the tv. In the good old days my wife could only watch them on her tablet so I had the tv for uninterrupted gaming. I miss those good old days...

Sometimes the control set up is bonkers, you wanna hope they didn't map an important button to touch. You really have to learn to use those back touchscreen controls effectively. I have & it's fine now.

Overall it ain't perfect, it's something I needed to get used to & works with certain games better than otgers. But, it's better than no games when you know you're free.

Can Kotaku AU investigate why Bethesda games on Steam are being charged the wrong price?

Seriously looks moronic, Steams unexplained reason why Australia is the only market still charged in USD... or is there a moron in sales at Bethesda that doesnt know this. Its ripping us off $20 per game and no other AAA publisher has had the problem.

It's been looked into. Steam don't like to trade in AUD because they don't want to be beholden to our consumer laws and it kept the illusion that they didn't trade in Australia (something the supreme court called a load of bollocks earlier this year).

As to the Australia tax price gouging, no one takes credit for the extra money. We get charged higher in USD than the US does for the exact same digital product but according to steam, the publishers, and the developers, no one pockets that extra money. So there's no solution. Except to boycott the service, I guess.

Also my boss called me, one of my coworkers called in sick today, so he needs me to come in early, hoorah now i'll be at work from midday to close. Just how I wanted to spend my day.. At least it's extra money, so it's not that bad.

Quick question: I've been playing Dragon Age Origins. First DA game I've played but I've read all the articles on the lore and I've been really pumped to play this game since it came out. I'm enjoying it, played for about 12 hours, but there's one thing that I'm really struggling to deal with. The voice talent. In my opinion it's the weakest part of the game. Maybe I've been spoilt with The Witcher 3 and Uncharted but it feels so stilted and unnatural. With both the leads and the cameos. The French accents...... oi. It's like an episode of Allo Allo (for anyone old enough to know what that is).

Anyway, I'm not ripping into it. I'm enjoying it and I want to continue enjoying it. I was just wondering if you had any thoughts on it, and have any tips on getting past that. Or maybe I'm just being too critical.

I argue the entirety of DA has middling-to-bad voice acting with some exceptions, and quite frankly Medieval RPGS aren't exactly known for high standards in voice acting, so middling-to-bad voice acting doesn't really faze me much.

On console it's whatever the equivalent to the box (square) button is.

Same in Mass Effect.

I'm not a huge fan of dialogue in games, I'm always on the look out for the fast forward button.
Nothing worse to me than subpar dialogue in a game that you can't skip or can only skip great chunks of dialogue.

I want the information, I just don't need every little thing acted out for me every times.

A lot of the issues you're hitting are because DA:O's design predates Bioware's Mass Effect approach. The game is basically KotOR in design. The protagonist is voiceless and nameless and it makes them seem really boring. From DA2 onward the protagonist has a voice and some kind of name or role (Hawke / Inquisitor) and feels much more connected and fleshed out as a result.

I had no real issues with the NPC voice work. Leliana's accent isn't a 'traditional' stereotypical French accent but the actress is French, so I always assumed it was a regional thing. But the stand-out voices were Alistair and Morrigan, and the rest are just passable. Bioware's come a long way since then, and the voice acting in DA2 and Inquisition is significantly better all around. DA2 also makes the races a lot better defined visually, especially the Qunari.

But yeah, the game's probably dated badly too. I can't imagine going back to it now. Also the entire franchise is going to come up second best compared to The Witcher.

As a family man I had a very rare weekend to myself. One hour after my family flew OS my mate turned up and stayed all weekend. Saturday we built his brand new gaming rig and it was the most gorgeous piece of overclocking simplicity you've ever seen. I was gobsmacked and more than a little jealous... he was naturally, tickled pink! Then it was playing Doom all Saturday night and Sunday until the dishwasher blew up and took out the circuit we were on!!!

Last Thursday I went to Whyalla for a work trip while sick, so Friday I went full collapse and had the day off. Played some Dark Souls 3, knocked off

Aldrich and the Dancer of the Boreal Valley

reasonably quickly. Saturday did a Costco run then went to a friend's housewarming with a "welcome to our ghetto crib" theme- basically all of those 'Lisbef clothes. wore my fantastic jumper bought for the occasion https://twitter.com/redartifice/status/743405311868821504

Sunday did not much, still recovering from this cold. Played some Mirror's Edge, it's... OK. Running is still fun, but dear god the writing is atrocious and the game suffers from "too many collectibles-" there's four different types, only one of which is particularly interesting. The game uses all of these jargony terms in the plot that makes it sound like nonsense, and if you want to find out what they're ACTUALLY talking about you have to find stupid hidden documents just for basic glossary. Ugh.

Also did a bunch of work on my armour- Foam construction is near complete now, and I should have it strapped in the next week or two. Then it's seal and paint and it's done. Here's the constructed back plate: https://twitter.com/redartifice/status/746277066065117184

A Monday Morning Question: Mirror's Edge has horrid collectibles. What's the best in-game collectible ever? I liked the shards in Infamous 2 because they helped you level AND showed up on your bloody map

They're well-established in the fiction of the universe, they're engagingly written (not brilliant, but good enough), and they're excellent foreshadowing for what's around the next corner. And because they don't affect the actual outcome of the game at all, they are purely optional (an important criterion in my book - I personally detest having to gather collectibles to level up).

I liked the glyph things in Assassins creed that took you into a special challenge level before they became just random feather collections.
I actually quite like collectables, riddler trophies in batman that required some thought at times and unlock the next hostage room. Even ones people despise I don't mind. I think because I play game with Mrs Tigs quite often, being able to keep an eye out for things like feathers in AC gives her something else to do as she watches and keeps her more engaged.

Yeah, the shards in the InFamous games made sense. Nice balance of "you need to find these" with "if you get a glimpse or run past one, we'll stick it in the map for you", so there were only a few really tricky ones, and most you'd come across just barrelling round the maps or looking at obvious spots - "That's the highest place on the map, bet there's one up there... cha-ching!"

But that also means the last episode of Silicon Valley which sucks :( I wish it was longer than 20 minutes, it's such a well written show. I don't think i've ever disliked something Mike Judge has done.

Edit: You say that we don't have to hear about the show for another 12 months. I beg to differ, I got mates that go on about it all year round like it's some kind of religion.

I think I may have finally solved the problem of my mysteriously disconnecting PS4!

All I had to do was move it to the other side of the room. Granted this meant reworking some of my cabling, but was still a remarkably easy thing. It seems crazy, but just moving it over a couple of metres made a huge difference.

2 possible scenarios:

one: the previous location was just too crowded with cables and wires
two: my neighbour had recently changed something on their side of the wall (new wifi router or somtehing?) which was interfering with mine.

Morning all! Had a pretty good weekend - lots of Destiny and Diablo 3. Been trying to knock off the Crucible questline as it's looking likely it's a requirement for the Year 2 moments of triumph. My experience thus far:

12 kills in clash? That won't be too bad... Huh, easier than I thought. Okay, next... 5 kills with an active runner in rift? How hard can that be?" *two hours later* "F(*@^ing RIFT!!!" Last Words and shotguns far as the eye can see...
"Okay, never going back there again... oh god... 12 kills in Rumble... /o\... Oh, Mayhem Rumble's on. \o/ *one game later* What's next? 8 kills in Skirmish? Err... *calls in assistance* Right. 3 probes in Salvage... " Got matchmade with two Trials gods who completely demolished the opposing team, while I hid in a corner deploying probes. Two victories, and quest objective complete! \o/ Okay, oh, more Control? Woo! More Rift? *Four games filled with unintelligible cursing* Clash? Woo! Rumble? Back to Mayhem! \o/ More Skirmish? Err... *previous assistance has called it a night at this point* "It can wait..."
9 points in Elimination matches... Elimination has been replaced with Trials for the weekend. Welp, that can wait, too, I guess...
6+ AR kills in a single match, four times... how hard can that be? *twenty games later* My Soulstealers claw... it does nothing! *headache ensues* Screw this, I'm going to play Diablo.

Meanwhile, in Diablo, my crusader's Thorns build is nearly complete - (incoming jargon alert :P) just need some imperial diamonds to reroll a socket onto a Compass Rose so I can use a Bane of the Trapped for the 25% damage boost. Swapped my Angel Hair Braid for a Belt of the Trove for a near-permanent 25% damage reduction, which let me swap out my pure healing skill for Provoke so everything nearby takes double thorns damage, and trying to decide if I want something better than Bane of the Stricken, given my sheet-DPS is about 16k and my primary weapon's damage is about 450. But I soloed a 63 Grift yesterday with a little time to spare, so ... :D

Only reason I'm doing it is because, if the leaked MoTs are correct, that questline is the only thing I have left to do for it. Plus, I think the only frustrating part left is the primary weapon kills; everything else is just "hop into the appropriate playlist and finish games." Even if the last step ends up taking 20 games... it'll still be faster than getting 5 kills with an active runner in Rift.

Good morning all. Didn't do a whole lot over the weekend aside from usual RPG and video game stuff. Played a tonne of Hearts of Iron as Argentina which worked rather well as I ended up conquering Japan. I also ran a game of 40K RPG Chaos which had its own, rather humorous shenanigans:

The group has managed to wind up in the Warp itself which presented a number of interesting possibilities. They discovered a treasure trove of knowledge that was ruled over by a Tzeentch Lord of Change that was basically like the library in the desert from Avatar. They didn't have any knowledge to trade so they promised to return with something of value. That something of value ended up being a Slaaneshi Keeper of Secrets that they had imprisoned using some rather finicky Dark Mechanicus equipment (basically like a portable stasis field/capture prison). I had hoped that a greater daemon would put up more of a fight, however that was not to be as the daemon caused Perils of the Warp and suffered chronological incontinence which forced it to pop out of existence momentarily. The daemon came back to see everyone pointing their guns directly at the beast and shooting it to hell and back before snagging its Warp essence in the trap.

So yeah, that happened. Trading the Keeper of Secrets resulted in them acquiring schematics and knowledge pertaining to developing new space marines, constructing Chaos robots, and finding out some interesting stuff about the Thousand Sons for psychic shenanigans. Of course, getting the resources and facilities to make use of all of this good stuff will take some time.

Triple AAA games nailing the brief. Indie games surprising people out of nowhere, and expansions and patches that completely turn a game around. It's been a good year for games - now it's time for you to vote for your favourite.